Adolfine

After looking at the Me-264 or He-277 alternate history thread, I started thinking of the 1940 Tokyo Olympic Games. The Me-261 was designed to take the flame from Berlin to Tokyo. Messerschmidt received Adolf Hitler's support for this project and the aircraft was named Adolfine. However, it was useless for warfare. One argument given for not building large bombers was "Hitler only asks me how many bombers ..". However, what if Hitler himself had asked Messerschmidt "can you make an aircraft that can take the flame to Tokyo and also be able to bomb New York or Moscow?". We know that Messerschmidt would have said yes. Would he have been able to build anything useful starting in 1937 to fly in late 1939? Can we imagine a Me-264 like aircraft, perhaps with six Ju-211s or did the Me-264 depend upon advances in aerodynamics or stress calculations? As an aside, would the historical Me-264 have actually worked or did it suffer from tail flutter and undercarriage problems (the test pilots seemed divided).

If a Me-264 had flown in late 1939, it might have made a significant impact in the Atlantic in early 41, a possible political impact on American opinion and perhaps visited the Urals or Baku later.

The Me-261 could have been transformed into a potent long range recon A/C.
With a range in excess of 6.800 mls. and a top speed of 385 mp/h, it could have been useful in the altantic theatre of operations.

The high speed of the Me-261 was reported for the V3 which only flew in 1943 with Db-610 engines. According to Green, the V3 was used for recon. However, one can understand why the development of an unarmed flying fuel tank was not given priority after September 1939. Had a Me-264 like design been prepared, development might have been given additional priority after September 1939 to attack British ships in the Atlantic.

IIRC the Me264 was called the Bannana bomber precisely because pre-war Willy Messerschmitt wanted to develop a courier plane to South Amerika.

The Ju-90S was evolved in response to RLM requirements for a four engined trans-Atlantic airliner (EF53).

Had there been a real focus at RLM a true trans Atlantic aircraft or Ural bomber would have been available from 1939 onwards. However the biggest problem was Ernst Udet's influence that all bombers had to be capable as dive bombers.

For that reason german aircraft design diverged into long range transports and medium range dive bombers .

The Me 264 and Ju-390 were developed as responses to RLM requirements for aircraft to shadow Allied convoys and thus mercifully were spared the nonsense of having to dive bomb convoys too.